Wave Goodbye, Wish Me Well
by LuckyLadybug
Summary: Bad news from the small town of Justice, Nevada has all of the Maverick boys sobered and saddened and talking.


**Maverick**

 **Wave Goodbye, Wish Me Well**

 **By Lucky_Ladybug**

 **Notes: The characters are not mine and the story is! This inevitably catches things up with the events of** _ **The Wild Wild West**_ **episode** _ **The Night of the Poisonous Posey**_ **. But my crossover timeline isn't over yet.**

It was in the Fall when the news went out that an international crime syndicate had been broken in Justice, Nevada. Details were scarce, but it wasn't long and they were trickling in. The chairman of the board, Lucrece Posey, had been taken in alive, along with a visiting criminal, Ascot Sam, who wasn't actually part of the syndicate. All the other board members were dead.

Beau didn't want to believe it. He had been afraid of something like this, yet still he had wanted to hope for a better outcome. But when more details made it into the next edition of the paper, he was sadly positive of their truth. And he was angry.

"Why did he do it?!" he cried, slamming the folded paper on the table in the saloon. "Why did he try something so foolish? It was doomed to fail from the start!"

Bart just shook his head. "Criminal in-fighting is pretty common," he said. "It's not unusual for someone to try to usurp power over the leader."

"But we talked about that! In the end Snakes decided he might not go through with it!" Beau looked up at his cousin, the pain obvious in his eyes. "He said he didn't want to take any unnecessary risks with his life!"

Bret, who had been quiet, gave a sad sigh. "The poor, misguided fool," he said. "Something must have happened later that changed his mind. You yourself said that if you back him into a corner, he'll strike like a frightened animal. I think that sums it up pretty good."

"It doesn't sum up anything!" Beau retorted. "It doesn't explain what happened that could have frightened him that badly or why he decided to do it on an occasion when he would be right there to witness it and take the fall if something went wrong." Now he slammed his hand on the table, causing the glasses on it to jump. "It doesn't explain why he's dead." The pain cracked his voice.

"Lucrece Posey killed him," Bart supplied. "It says so right here."

"Yes, but will she even have to answer for it?" Beau exclaimed.

"It wasn't done in self-defense," Bret said without looking their way. "She just poisoned him out of revenge when she figured out the truth that he tried to kill her. She'll answer for it." He paused. "Just as Snakes would have done if his plan had succeeded and Miss Posey had been killed."

"I hope I didn't have anything to do with causing Snakes to make that decision," Beau said, barely above a whisper.

Bret started and looked to him. "It's been a while since you've seen him. I'm sure it was something else, especially since last you knew, he wasn't going to go through with it."

"That's what I'll have to hope, I guess, instead of worrying that Miss Posey found out who I am exactly and realized that Snakes was involved in our plans to trick her in Bent Spoon." Beau looked down, picking up the paper again. "Just two lines in this miserable article. That's all his life has been reduced to. No one will even know that he wasn't just a crime boss and he wasn't just malicious and he actually cared about people!"

"That's not entirely true," Bart said kindly, feeling bad that he hadn't previously been able to offer anything helpful or comforting in the conversation. "Everyone who lives in one of the towns he controlled knows. _We_ know. And who knows how many other people know."

Bret nodded, still looking off in the distance. "There's probably a lot like us, scattered all over the country. He said he tried to keep people from getting beat-down like he was. Anyone he helped he probably swore to secrecy, just like us."

Beau slowly unfolded the paper and stared at the article again. "He can't even be given a decent burial," he said in further haunted dismay. "Someone stole the bodies of all the board members before the undertaker could even round them up. Why?"

"There's a lot of sick people in the world," Bart frowned. "We'll probably never know the answer to that one." And he wasn't sure he wanted to. Anyone who would steal six bodies couldn't have anything good in mind.

"It's not right." Beau laid the paper back down. "No one deserves that end." Finally noticing how far-away Bret seemed, he looked to the older man in surprised concern. "Are you alright, Cousin Bret?"

Bret started and looked over. "Oh, I'm fine," he insisted with a smile. "I'm just thinking."

"You probably encountered Snakes the most out of any of us," Beau said.

Bret nodded. "Yeah, I probably did. But I don't think I knew him any better than you did. Maybe in some ways, you knew him better."

Beau looked down. Bret wouldn't say it aloud, but it was Snakes' feelings of being an outcast all his life that really bound him to Beau, who had often felt like an outsider in his own family. No one had really understood that feeling of not really belonging anywhere until Snakes came along.

"Maybe we should try playing some poker," Bart suggested. "That might cheer us up."

Beau gave a hollow laugh. "Snakes always complained about us putting so much value on money. It seemed a strange attitude for a crime boss. But then again, he was never in it for the money. It was always about survival for him."

"Snakes was a strange one," Bret agreed. He looked to Beau. "I'm sorry you've lost your friend."

"I'm sorry too," Beau said quietly. Louder he said, "What was he to you, Cousin Bret? You two certainly never came across as friends."

"We weren't," Bret replied. "But there was a grudging respect there, on both our parts. I saw behind the masks he put up. I saw there was a lot more to him than just being a crime boss. And I liked the better person I saw beyond that."

"I probably knew him the least," Bart said, awkwardly tracing a pattern on the table. "But I think part of it was that I didn't _want_ to know him."

Beau nodded in agreement. "You wanted to get out of his house before you were fully healed from the knife wound," he remembered.

"He made me face a lot of things I hadn't realized before," Bart said. "I didn't like that he was the one to see those things about my own cousin and I didn't."

"To be honest, I didn't like it at first either," Beau said. "I didn't want to like Snakes and I didn't like that my mind and heart were open to him of all people and no one else. But then I did like him," he added lower.

"He gets under your skin," Bret said. "Like him or hate him, you can't forget him."

"I wonder where he went." Beau sounded far-away now. "I mean, up . . . or down. . . ." He frowned.

Bret looked uncomfortable. "I don't really like to be the judge of anyone's status in the afterlife. Offhand, you'd figure he'd probably go down, way down. But maybe with all the people he helped, apparently because he genuinely didn't want to see them in trouble, he'd go up."

"Or maybe he'd be in limbo, for a while anyway," Bart mused. "If there's really an in-between place."

"Or maybe he'd even be stranded on Earth," Beau said quietly. "Like I was."

Bart didn't want to be reminded of that. "Well, there's nothing we can do about it anyway," he said. "Wherever he is, that's that."

"I know," Beau sighed. He clenched a fist. "I just . . . hate for it to have to be this way. He shouldn't be dead."

"A lot of people shouldn't be dead, but they are anyway," Bret said.

"And Snakes wouldn't be if he hadn't done such a stupid thing," Beau said bitterly.

"Actually, he was probably doomed either way," Bret said with a touch of sadness in his voice. "A couple of Secret Service agents fought the other board members and got them killed off. Snakes would have been among them if he hadn't already been killed by Miss Posey."

"Maybe," Beau said. "Or maybe he would have helped the Secret Service agents if given the chance. He wanted to get out of that mess."

"Well, we'll never know now," Bret said. "It's probably better not to think about the What Ifs."

"It's not always easy not to," Beau answered.

"Well, I think I'm going to try to find a poker game and get into it," Bart said, pushing his chair back from the table and standing. "Are you sure neither of you want to join me?"

"Maybe in a few minutes," Bret said.

"I really don't think I'd be much use in a game tonight," Beau said. "And I don't feel like losing any of the money I currently have."

"Alright then," said Bart. But he hesitated, feeling awkward to leave when his family was miserable.

Bret looked up at him after a moment. "Go on, Bart," he encouraged. "Like you said, you didn't know him as well as we did. There's no reason for you to sit around thinking about him when you could be winning a pot."

Beau nodded. "Cousin Bret is right. Go have some fun, Cousin Bart."

Not knowing what else to say, Bart finally nodded as well and started to weave among the tables to find the poker game.

Bret started to pour a drink from the courtesy water pitcher. "Here's to Snakes, wherever he is," he said, raising the glass. "The crime boss with a heart of gold, who'd deny it up and down if you pointed it out to him."

Beau poured a glass as well. "To Snakes," he agreed, clinking glasses with Bret.


End file.
